The laughter started to surround him, until it was everywhere and nowhere. Arthur spun around with the sword in hand ready for anything. Or at least he thought he was.
A large plume of fire erupted from the darkness and out of it stepped a man Arthur had seen once, but never forgotten. A man that he still sometimes dreamt about and woke up in a cold sweat.
"Breaking out of my illusion takes real will Arthur... I thought I could keep you there until your body perished but it seems I was wrong."
"Who are you!" Arthur said holding the sword up, the sword brightened a fraction as he did, pushing back the darkness that was trying to surround him.
"Hahahahaha... I sometimes forget you do not know me as well as I you... I am High Priest Holden."
Arthur narrowed his eyes, not sure what he meant by the comment. "Well High Priest Holden... you are going to free me from whatever prison this is and you better hope I do not come for retribution."
Holden stood there smiling.
"You are going to let me go, NOW!" Arthur threatened.
"Let you go," Holden said softly. "Let you GO. Oh, Arthur, sweet Arthur, you think this is a negotiation, you think there is something you could say or do or threaten that would make me open my hand and let you slip back into that body of yours... that is... that is so..." He pressed his fingers against his lips and a giggle escaped through them.
"That is so precious"
"I am not asking."
"No, no, of course you are not, you are TELLING me, you are the hero and the hero tells the villain what will happen... that is how stories go, isn't it, that is how they always go." Holden's eyes widened and he leaned forward. "I will never let you go, Arthur. Never. Not in thirty years, not in three hundred, not if the stars burn out and the sea boils away and every god in every temple begs me on their knees, because I know what you are, I know how special you are, and I have waited my entire miserable life for you..."
Arthur's grip tightened on the hilt. "I don't know what you think I am."
Holden stared at him.
Then he began to laugh, he laughed so much that he almost fell over, he laughed so much that tears were streaming down his face and dripping onto the floor.
Then it stopped.
Holden straightened up.
He began to walk in a circle around Arthur, his crimson robes trailing across the shadows around him.
"Let me tell you something about myself, Arthur, since we are friends now, I've known you for nearly thirty years now... I think that makes us very close, don't you, I think that makes us practically family."
He spread his hands as he turned to face him. "I have always felt wrong Arthur. From the very first memory I own, I have felt wrong, and not because of this." He gestured at his own face. "No, no, no, I never cared about this. People fear what they do not understand and I learned that fear is useful."
He stopped behind Arthur and Arthur turned to keep him in view.
"I felt wrong because the world felt wrong. The people. The buildings. The temples and the slaves and the markets and the priests... every single one of them felt thin, Arthur, they felt like they would tear if I pushed hard enough, like there was nothing behind their eyes but paint." He tapped a finger against his own temple. "So I read every book in every library from Qarth to Volantis looking for a name for what I felt. Looking for someone who could enlighten me... one philosopher. One madman. One drunk scribbling on a tavern wall who felt what I felt. But I found nothing. Gods and prophecies, destiny and wheels and fire, and none of it, NONE OF IT, even came close."
His hand went into his robes.
It came out holding something small.
It sat in his palm, no bigger than a walnut, and it glowed with a clean blue-white light that pulsed.
A memory crystal.
The blood drained out of Arthur's face.
"Ahh," Holden breathed, and his smile spread wide. "There it is. There it is, that look, oh I have been waiting so long to see that look. You recognise it don't you."
"Where did you get that."
"Asshai. I was twenty years old... merely a young adept with more ambition than sense, crawling through the vaults beneath the Temple of the Black Flame looking for anything that would make the wrongness I felt stop." He turned the crystal over in his fingers. "It was sealed in a box carved with Yi Tish script, naturally I assumed it was an artefact of the Golden Empire. I spent three years trying to open it, Arthur, three YEARS, with blood and fire and every ritual the red priests and shadow binders had taught me, but none of it worked."
He let out a short breathless laugh.
"And then I stopped trying to force it, I merely pushed it against my head and opened myself to it."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"The things it showed me..."
"I saw a world of glass towers and iron birds that flew without wings, of people talking to each other through little glass boxes they carried in their pockets, billions of people, more people than every city in Essos put together, and I saw them as clearly as I see you now."
He held the crystal up between them. "But the most important thing I was Arthur... was a story. A story of Kingdoms. Families and Dragons. All of it written down in a book for people to read and that story was THIS. This world. These people. The Seven Kingdoms and the Free Cities, every lord, every slave, every priest and EVERYONE who has ever existed."
He lowered the crystal.
"Through this crystal I discovered the truth behind the profound sense of wrongness I'd felt my entire life..."
"This world is not real."
"None of it," Holden went on. "Maelys was not real. The Targaryens are not real. Your WIVES, Arthur, your lovely wives are not real. Your children, your friends and your family are words, Arthur. Ink. Merely puppets written and imagined up by a man who cares even less for his creations than the gods of our world do."
"Stop."
"But then I discovered myself... a puppet in another story... one where I was called the Judge... do you understand Arthur... do you understand how it feels to know you are merely a dream... an invention... a thought... yet I was not even allowed to stay in my own dream... I was ripped out and tossed into this hell, my memories stripped away!!!"
"I'm in hell without even the ability to scream!!!"
He leaned close.
"On a beach at King's Landing. Through the eyes of a wyvern you came walking down the thread I had sewn into its mind, and when I looked at you I KNEW YOU." His eyes were wet. "I knew your face. Thirty years I had been living with the memories in this crystal, Arthur, and the man whose memories they were had YOUR face."
Arthur took a step back. "That is not possible," he said. Of course he knew what the memory crystal was but he didn't want to confirm what Holden was saying. He didn't know why but he had a very bad feeling about all of this.
"Oh but it is." Holden laughed again. "You are the only real thing in this world, Arthur. You did not come from these pages. You came from OUTSIDE them. Something picked you up and dropped you in here, I don't know what it was and I don't care, all I care about is that you are REAL." His hands curled into fists. "You are the only proof I have ever found that there is anything beyond this world of puppets!"
"But more than that... you are a door, Arthur and I am going to walk through it."
"You can't, I'm part of this world just like you are, there is no way out."
"I CAN." The word hit the dark and the dark shook. "I HAVE SPENT THIRTY YEARS INSIDE YOUR HEAD, I WILL FIND THE DOOR, I WILL..." He stopped and he calmed himself down while looking down at his feet.
Eventually he looked back up and he smiled.
"I am going to eat you."
"Not only your body, I am going to eat ALL of you, your blood, your bones, your soul and every memory you brought with you from that world of glass, and when I have swallowed the last piece of you I will be what you are. I will be real... no longer a puppet." He smiled, and the smile kept going, stretching wider than his mouth should have allowed, pulling the skin of his cheeks tight against the bone until his teeth showed all the way back to the molars. "Oh, puppets. You will like this, Arthur. This is one of yours."
Holden started to approach him.
"I've got no strings... to hold me down..."
Arthur stepped back as he saw Holden approach.
"To make me fret... to make me frown..."
Holden crossed the space between them in a single explosive stride that was faster than anything his size should have allowed, and his hands closed on Arthur's shoulders with a grip that went past strong and into something that felt superhuman.
Arthur tried to raise his sword but Holden drove him to the ground.
The impact slammed the air out of Arthur's lungs and the darkness beneath him started crawling up the sides of his body. Holden was on top of him, pinning him, the enormous weight of the pale man bearing down on his chest and his arms. His hands moved from Arthur's shoulders to his face, his long pale fingers spreading across his cheeks, his temples, the sides of his skull.
"I hate strings..." Holden whispered while his face was inches from Arthur's. His dark eyes were so wide that the whites showed all the way around the irises.
His fingers tightened on Arthur's skull.
"But now I'm free..."
The darkness started to sap the warmth out of him and seemed to reach deeper, taking all the energy he had and making him struggle to stay awake.
"There are no strings..."
The pale face split into the widest grin Arthur had ever seen on any living thing.
"...on me."
"Hold still," Holden crooned, through a mouth that should not have been able to form words. "Hold still now, there's a good boy, hold still and let me... la la la... let me cut the strings..."
He felt Holden start to try and pull at something at the centre of his chest. He didn't know what it was but it hurt even moving it and yet Holden was yanking it as hard as he could. Meanwhile the darkness surrounding him continued to sap his strength and drain everything he had.
"LET... ME... IN..." Holden's whisper had dropped into an almost growl. "Let me in let me in LET ME IN, I need it, I NEED it, Arthur, you don't understand, you CAN'T understand, you've always been real, you've never had to... haha... you've never had to wake up every morning and WONDER if today is the day you just... CEASE... hahaha... just POP like a bubble and there's nothing left because there was never anything THERE..."
His face contorted through three expressions in a single second. Grief. Rage. Joy. They blurred together into something that was all of them and none of them.
"I WANT TO BE REAL I WANT TO BE REAL I WANT TO BE REAL I WANT—"
Arthur tightened his grip on his sword and light ran across his chest and up into Holden's face and the force of it lifted the pale man off his feet and threw him backward. He flew thirty feet through the dark before hitting the floor, rolling and coming up on his knees with his hands held in front of his face.
His body was smoking and seemed to have been burned though it didn't seem like he cared. Eventually flame started to surround him like an aura.
He looked at Arthur.
He began to laugh again, softly, rocking back and forth on his knees.
"You see," he said. "Even this is not mine."
He held up his blackened hands and fire bloomed from them in an eruption that blew out in every direction.
"THIS POWER," Holden screamed. "I ATE A FRUIT, ARTHUR, A PIECE OF FRUIT FROM A TREE ON AN ISLAND THAT WAS NOT ON ANY MAP AND IT GAVE ME THIS, BUT THE FRUIT WAS NOT REAL, SOMEONE IN YOUR WORLD SAT DOWN AND WROTE A STORY OF A FRUIT THAT MAKES FIRE AND NOW I HAVE IT BUT IT IS NOT MINE, NONE OF IT IS MINE, I AM A FICTION WEARING ANOTHER FICTION INSIDE A THIRD FICTION, HAHAHAHA, AND I AM SO TIRED, ARTHUR, I AM SO TIRED OF BEING NOTHING—"
The fire gathered around him, it climbed his legs and his chest and his arms and his face until he stood in the middle of it entirely covered, a seven-foot shape of white flame with two dark wet eyes looking out through the centre.
His voice came through the fire perfectly calm.
"Tell me, Arthur..."
"When you came here did you think about it even once. Did you stop and wonder whether the things living here could feel pain. Were you the one who dragged me into this nightmare Arthur?! Did you curse me with life?!"
His voice cracked.
"Did you think about ME. Did you think about it AT ALL."
The fire blew outward.
Arthur raised his blade in front of his face and the light protected him from the first wave. The second came harder and he was pushed back a step. The third pushed him back two. Each wave was hotter, each wave carried more of Holden's will behind it, and the circle of light around Arthur shrank until he was standing on a patch of brightness no wider than his own shadow.
"I am going to eat you alive," Holden said, walking forward through the flame. "Every piece. Every memory. Every breath. And when I am done there will be nothing left of you but an empty void, and I will walk out of this place wearing your skin and I will be REAL."
"When I'm finally real I will burn this world down to the last page..."
His hands reached for Arthur's face.
"NOW COME HERE!!!"
The fire and shadow that surrounded Holden started to press on him from all sides. The shield of light surrounding Arthur continued to get small until it seemed as if it would wink out of existence.
Arthur was afraid.
He was afraid of Holden.
He was afraid that he might be right.
What if his wives and children aren't real.
He thought of Mira holding Lancelot by the hearth. He thought of Cassie's laugh and Rhaella's hand in his own. He thought of Mordred glaring at the king from his knee, of Jory's face the day he gave him a sword, of Lunk standing in the shallows with a bird on each shoulder.
He thought of his friends and loved ones.
He thought of everything he'd done through with them.
No...
He didn't care whether someone had written them.
He had loved them and that was his decision and his alone.
"ENOUGH!!!"
He raised the sword over his head in both hands and brought the blade down. The light detonated in a blast that went out from the blade in every direction faster than the fire could move, and where it passed the fire wnd darkness was destroyed and Holden's scream stopped halfway out of his mouth. The construct came apart around them, every wall and every layer and every thread.
Then everything was light.
Everything was silent.
Then it was not.
...
The sound of waves.
The smell of salt and blood and ash.
Arthur opened his eyes.
(AN: Bit of a shorter chapter but tbf the others have just been pretty long as of late. I'm sure some people will complain about this but tbh I don't see the issue. No one knows about the system and they never will. But I do think this kind of existential dread is pretty interesting and I think it works with Holden pretty well. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)
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